In attics all over Media Land, reporters whose aging knees are not really up to the task are rummaging through dusty notebooks, yellowing files and tottering stacks of tape and videocassettes.

The '90s are back.

Newt Gingrich has made attacking the media part of his campaign strategy. Excellent. It's much easier to dust off old scandals than dig up new ones, although Nancy Pelosi, like Newt a former House speaker, is hinting at fresh dirt to come.

Updating a line from the early '90s, conservative editor R. Emmett Tyrrell said that Newt had more skeletons in his closet than a body snatcher. Outside, too.

During the debates, Newt snapped back at Fox's Juan Williams and CNN's John King for asking what he deemed stupid, inappropriate questions — which, by the way, he never really answered.

The pro-Newt audiences — and how many more of those are there going to be? — happily jeered at the broadcasters, and Newt glowed with righteous indignation and self-satisfaction.

Now he has decided that attacking the "elite, liberal media" is the way to go in his campaign. And there is a faction on the right that deeply believes in a liberal media conspiracy.

Anyone familiar with the inner workings of a newspaper or a TV news operation knows that the kind of people attracted to the business are incapable of conspiring to order a takeout pizza. Otherwise, they'd be hedge-fund managers and venture capitalists and make $20 million a year like Mitt Romney.

Journalists are incapable of dividing a dinner check among more than three of them. So that, and paying for a shared cab, are governed by strictures handed down from journalist to journalist called the "Germond Rules."

They saved an earlier generation from the perils of long division and the current generation from trying to locate the tip-calculator app on their iPhone.

And while Newt may think he's sticking it to the media by calling them "liberal elites," he's dealing with notoriously short attention spans, and the only thing they hear is the "elite" part.

As IN: "Hey, Mom, did you know I'm officially a member of the 'elite.' And please don't bring up law school again."

Now that the press knows Newt comes unwound over questions about his extramarital affairs and marriages, he'll get them at every stop on the campaign and probably from reporters who are too young to be embarrassed.

One of his first stops after a debate was an interview with Univision — a Spanish-language network, for heaven's sake. He was drawn into a comparison between his affair and President Bill Clinton's brief fling with Monica Lewinsky.

Is this not great or what?

Clinton and Lewinsky, we know, thanks to the diligent snoops at the special prosecutor's office, had nine hurried sexual encounters over two years.

Newt's affair lasted six years until his then-wife said he asked for an open marriage.

(Newt said, "That's not true," effectively calling the second Mrs. Gingrich a liar.)

Newt explained that Clinton lied about his affair under oath; Newt presumably just lied.

Religious conservatives might argue that wedding vows are akin to an oath, but what are they going to do? Vote for the faithful, uxorious Barack Obama? Sometimes, as a sage politician once observed, the true believers are obliged to rise above principle.

(As much fun as it is revisiting the '90s, can we not impose a statute of limitations on Monica Lewinsky? The woman must be 38 now. Barring fresh scandal, we should forget about her.)

Newt may want to rethink his strategy of attacking the media, which, by the way, he found handy enough when he was building his GOP majority in the House. Otherwise, he'll face awkward, inappropriate and loaded questions at every campaign stop.